1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to software-based systems and methods for providing data collection, recording, billing, supply charges, and quality assurance for a mobile computing environment, and, more particularly, the present invention relates to a mobile computer hardware and software system for the management of multiple patients by multiple medical personnel, especially for anesthesia applications.
2. Description of the Background
In many diverse environments, a large amount of data must be gathered and recorded for future use by one or more personnel related to the information thus gathered. Often times, data is gathered on multiple subjects at various recurring times in order to track changes that occur and determine whether to change the management of each particular subject. Management of these vast amounts of data, especially where the data for each subject must be kept isolated from other data, can be an onerous project. Historically, these data management systems constituted voluminous paper records and a complex web of sub-systems allowing for various subsequent tasks and records to be produced.
The medical field has countless examples of procedures in which data for many different patients must be collected over an extended period of time. For example, common today is the practice of making handwritten anesthesia records, handwritten pharmacy drug charge forms, handwritten quality assurance forms, handwritten supply charges (e.g., masks, tubing, syringes and other general hospital supplies), and handwritten anesthesia billing forms. Several of these handwritten papers are shown in the figures: FIG. 1 is an exemplary anesthesia record; FIG. 2 is an exemplary preoperative assessment form; FIG. 3 is an exemplary drug charge form; and FIG. 4 is an exemplary anesthesia charge sheet.
Such a practice is susceptible to mistakes particularly by not documenting appropriate information in view of a busy operating/procedure room environment. By not documenting appropriate information, insufficient information is recorded on the anesthesia record. If thereafter called upon by a medical or legal representative to review what occurred with a particular patient, there may be nothing recorded to verify care given. Further, because the operating/procedure room environment is extremely busy, anesthesia providers don't readily document pharmacy drug charges or supply charges, which results in lost revenue for the hospital. Again, with the hectic nature of the operating/procedure room environment, documenting appropriate surgical procedures along with anesthesia start/stop times is historically inaccurate.
By having to rely on handwritten documentation, time is wasted that could otherwise be used to direct and provide needed care to the patient. Further, since there is only one copy of the multiple different forms created, losing just one particular form would have a significant negative impact on documentation, billing, drug charges, supply charges, or altering the results of quality assurance. By losing the anesthesia record, you have no documentation of what happened and what kind of care was provided. By losing the billing form, supply charges form, or pharmacy drug charge form, you are dealing with lost revenue, and by losing the quality assurance form, you are not creating accurate results of the evaluation of care provided. A single system for automatically maintaining, creating, and storing the information from these various forms is desired and has been partially addressed through prior practices.
Traditionally, computer applications have been written in an attempt to solve the problems of anesthesia recording, but have met with limited success. Utilizing a software application on a standard personal computer (PC) not only brought limited benefits, but created additional problems as well. For example, the PC is stationary, bulky, and takes up space that is already limited in the operating/procedure room. In these prior systems, the health care professional still needs to gather initial information on paper and then enter that information into the computer. The PC is typically fixed behind the anesthesia provider, such that the anesthesia provider is not monitoring the patient, which means that the patient is not receiving the full attention of the anesthesia provider.
The prior art anesthesia applications may be complicated and not straightforward to use, often requiring classes or other extensive training in order to use the application. This may create additional problems when a locum tenens anesthesia provider, who is usually not given any orientation, is providing care. Also, because the application is typically set up such that data is automatically pulled from the patient monitors, errors can result on the anesthesia record due to a variety of circumstances. For example, this may occur when the surgeon is using an electrical cauterizing device, which interferes with the PC system, which in turn causes the PC to document spurious or incorrect data.
These prior art systems are also limited because the data cannot be edited. If a problem occurs and the data needs to be examined, the anesthesia professional is therefore in the awkward position of defending a document that was intended to defend the user. Typically, at the end of the procedure, the anesthesia record must be printed out before leaving the operating/procedure room. In the prior systems, this causes an additional delay that is not in the best interests of the patient who now must wait for the printing before being taken to the post anesthesia care unit for recovery. Therefore, incomplete information may be quickly printed, information may be left out of the report entirely, or information may be hand-appended at a later time. Each of these “fixes” limits the utility of the prior computer-based systems and does not adequately address the problems with paper-based systems.
As such, an integrated system that allows for the intuitive and automatic collection of data that also allows for automatic quality assurance processing and printing of reports, supply charges, and bills is desired. Such a system may be used in a wide variety of applications in which a large range of data is periodically collected from multiple subjects. The invention may be especially useful in the medical arts—such as anesthesiology. The present invention, in at least one preferred embodiment, addresses one or more of the above-described and other limitations to prior art systems.